Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to monitoring and tracking and, more particularly, to a system and method for reporting a status of an asset.
Introduction
Tracking mobile assets represents a growing enterprise as companies seek increased visibility into the status of a service fleet (e.g., long-haul delivery fleet). Visibility into the status of a service fleet can be gained through mobile terminals that are affixed to service vehicles. These mobile terminals can be designed to generate position information that can be used to update status reports that are provided to customer representatives.
In generating status reports to a centralized facility, the mobile terminal can generate position information through the reception of satellite position signals such as that generated by the GPS satellite network. Processing these GPS signals, generating position information, and transmitting status reports to the centralized facility comes at the expense of the power requirements at the mobile terminal. Here, an increased number of reporting cycles reduces the effective battery life of the mobile terminal, thereby increasing the maintenance and field costs of the mobile terminals. Thus, what is needed is a system and method for increasing visibility into the mobile assets, while maintaining a reasonable battery life of the mobile terminal.